No, You Can't Use the Nets' Specialized Lighting System

As the Brooklyn Nets sought to improve themselves over the off-season by reshaping their roster and rebranding their identity, they had an important ally waiting for them: their new $1 billion arena.

When the Nets make their Barclays Center debut Monday night in a preseason exhibition against the Washington Wizards, they will find that everything from the angle of the seating bowl to the installation of halogen lights was done with a purpose: to generate energy inside the arena and give the team a home-court advantage, something the Nets sorely lacked in recent seasons.

ENLARGE

Center Brook Lopez checks out the Barclays Center, which was specifically designed with the Nets in mind—from the seating angle to the lights.
Associated Press

"I don't think there's an arena like it," said point guard Deron Williams, who even had a hand in making sure the players' lockers had electrical outlets. "It's not a makeshift locker room like we had in New Jersey."

Last season, as denizens of the Prudential Center in Newark, the Nets actually had a higher winning percentage on the road (.394) than they did at home (.273). Yes, these are mere gradations of awfulness: The Nets were terrible no matter where they played. Still, they were a better 3-point shooting team on the road (36.1%) than they were at home (32.3%). And Williams, in particular, was a more proficient player on the road, where he averaged 21.5 points and shot 36.7% from 3-point range. At home, those numbers dipped to 20.4 points and 30.6%.

It was important to the team that Barclays be built as a basketball-first facility, with the seating bowl pulled tight to the court on all four sides. Steve Duethman, a principal at the architectural firm AECOM, which collaborated on the Barclays project, said the arena is much more intimate than the Prudential Center, which was designed primarily for hockey. Of course, many things were absent at The Pru, including spectators. Nets coach Avery Johnson said he expects a different atmosphere at games this season—one that he thinks will help improve his players' performance.

"Once we get the building filled up, we're going to feel like our fans are on top of the court," Johnson said.

It might seem like common sense, AECOM architect Scott Sayers said in an email, but because a hockey rink (200 feet by 85 feet) is much wider and longer than a basketball court (94 feet by 50 feet), all the seating is pushed outward to accommodate the ice surface. As a result, when a hockey building is host to a basketball game, the playing surface is smaller but the seats remain farther from the action.

The hope is that the Barclays's snug seating plan flusters opponents. (New Yorkers can be vocal.) It helps that the lower seating bowl is pitched at a relatively steep angle, at about 18 to 20 degrees, Duethman said. The rake of the upper bowl is even more dramatic, at 36 degrees.

Johnson said the setup could also benefit his outside shooters: The lower-bowl seats are so close to the baskets behind each baseline that they provide a good, consistent backdrop. Some shooters say they have a tough time with depth perception in cavernous arenas.

And then there are the lights. The arena actually has two sports lighting systems: one for the Nets and one for everyone else. The one for everyone else is a metal-halide system, which is the sort of bright, white lighting used at most sports arenas. When the Harlem Globetrotters played the first basketball game at Barclays earlier this month, arena officials turned these lights on. They also will be used when Barclays is host to college basketball—and that includes Kentucky's game against Maryland in November. (Yes, even John Calipari will have to settle for the regular lights.)

The Nets lights are different: Six flying trusses, suspended 75 feet above the court, will house 468 tungsten-halogen fixtures that will beam a warm glow squarely onto the court. Karen Goldstick, the principal at White Plains-based Goldstick Lighting Design, which was in charge of the project, said the effect is that the playing surface will pop like a stage—"theater-like," she said—and the rest of the arena will go dark. "You'll notice a big difference in color," said Goldstick, who also works as the NBA's official venue lighting consultant.

The halogen system is unique to Barclays and Staples Center, where the Los Angeles Lakers play their home games. After Staples Center introduced the lights as a temporary feature at the 2004 NBA All-Star Game, the Lakers liked them so much that they decided to keep them, Goldstick said.

Johnson said the lighting was a big topic of conversation at a meeting last year between Nets and arena officials. It was such a priority, in fact, that Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov and Barclays developer Bruce Ratner both signed off on it. "That's one of the things we wanted—that Broadway feel, where the focus and the lighting is all on the floor," Johnson said.

If the lighting is a spectacle for fans, it could boost the team in an even more tangible way, according to John Tauer, the head basketball coach and a professor of psychology at the University of St. Thomas, a Div. III school in Minnesota. An important factor in performance, Tauer said, is familiarity with the environment. At some point, the Nets will get used to their lighting—but maybe their opponents won't. "If you introduce something that's unique and provides a challenge for teams that they don't see at other arenas, it could provide an advantage," Tauer said.

After years of futility, the new-look Nets will take any break they can get.

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